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Indonesia's Islamic organizations sustain the country's thriving civil society, democracy, and reputation for tolerance amid diversity. Yet scholars poorly understand how these organizations envision the accommodation of religious difference. What does tolerance mean to the world's largest Islamic organizations? What are the implications for democracy in Indonesia and the broader Muslim world? Jeremy Menchik argues that answering these questions requires decoupling tolerance from liberalism and investigating the historical and political conditions that engender democratic values. Drawing on archival documents, ethnographic observation, comparative political theory, and an original survey, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia demonstrates that Indonesia's Muslim leaders favor a democracy in which individual rights and group-differentiated rights converge within a system of legal pluralism, a vision at odds with American-style secular government but common in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.
In 1939, the German sociologist Norbert Elias published his groundbreaking work The Civilizing Process, which has come to be regarded as one of the most influential works of sociology today. In this insightful new study tracing the history of violence in Cambodia, the authors evaluate the extent to which Elias's theories can be applied in a non-Western context. Drawing from historical and contemporary archival sources, constabulary statistics, victim surveys and newspaper reports, Broadhurst, Bouhours and Bouhours chart trends and forms of violence throughout Cambodia from the mid-nineteenth century through to the present day. Analysing periods of colonisation, anti-colonial wars, interdependence, civil war, the revolutionary terror of the 1970s and post-conflict development, the authors assess whether violence has decreased and whether such a decline can be attributed to Elias's civilising process, identifying a series of universal factors that have historically reduced violence.
INTRODUCTION: SEARCH FOR AN ALTERNATIVE TO OVERCOME THE CURRENT STALEMATE
The Tibet issue has remained intractable for at least fifty years (Sperling 2004; Sautman & Dreyer 2006). Several dialogues between representatives of the exiled Dalai Lama and the Chinese government in the last few years have produced no tangible results (Rajan 2005; The Nation 2005; Rabgey & Sharlho 2004). The 2008 Tibetan protests against Chinese rule in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, and the counter-protests by Chinese students in major cities around the world, inflamed mistrust and suspicion between the Tibetan and ethnic Chinese communities. This discord tarnished China's credibility as a global power (Economy & Segal 2008: 47).
Over the next few years, increased radicalisation in both Tibetan and ethnic Chinese communities is anticipated. This highlights the need for initiatives that would build up mutual understanding and trust at a grassroots level, as well as within the leaderships. Given how hard it is now to rebuild trust between the Chinese government and the Tibetan government in exile, it is vital to promote mutual understanding and trust between the two communities of people through a process of citizens’ deliberation.
A deliberative approach to minority rights issues in Xinjiang Province was called for by Justin J. Stein (2003), who argues: ‘CCP rhetoric regarding the unity and apparently utopian quality of interactions between various nationalities should be replaced by a more genuine discourse reflective of vying interests and preferences.’ In the past decade, the Dalai Lama himself has made a number of significant efforts to talk with Han Chinese scholars in the US and beyond (Zhang Weiguo 1999). Even earlier, in 1988, Wu Jinghua, the former party secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), organised a series of ‘heart to heart’ meetings with representatives of the major monasteries to hear their grievances. Wu paid a price, becoming dubbed a ‘Lama Secretary’ (Bahl 1989) and being removed from his position a few months later.
Between 2009 and 2012, Beijing sent a number of official delegations to major international cities to host a series of talks on China's Tibet policy. (A quick online search for the term ‘Sino–Tibetan dialogue’ on 10 August 2012 brought up a list of 533,000 items.) Such meetings could potentially reduce mutual distrust, explore new thinking and initiatives, and provide a basis for the development of a deliberative approach.
This concluding chapter not only aims to provide a summary of the democratic approaches discussed in the book, but also seeks to present an integrated theory of democratic governance which is centred on deliberative referendum. It presents a synthesis of the theory and case studies in the book, focusing on the idea of deliberative referendum and how it can improve democratic governance mechanism.
This book has examined a number of democratic devices: referendums, autonomy and minority rights, consociational arrangements and deliberative forums (Chapter 1); the referendum as a conflict resolution mechanism (Chapter 5); liberal multiculturalism's system of minority rights that protects the interests of Tibetans (Chapters 7–9); consociational democracy and the building of complex power-sharing mechanisms (Chapter 8); deliberative democracy and its offer of a talk-centric approach as better management of the conflicts of divided societies (Chapter 10). Each of these devices has been applied throughout the world with varying degrees of success and failure.
In the specific context of China, this book has sought to develop an anti-empire thesis that articulates how democracy can address the national identity issue (Chapter 3); it has discussed a federalism solution to the Taiwan question (Chapter 4); it has examined the case of the 2004 referendum in Taiwan and attempted to derive lessons from it so as to improve referendum mechanisms and processes through public deliberation (Chapter 5); it has discussed Taiwan's bid for a UN seat, and examined questions concerning political representation and equality (Chapter 6); it has examined three competing discourses on the Tibetan question, calling for a dialogue and engagement between Confucianism and liberalism (Chapter 7); it has dealt with the autonomy issue in Tibet and makes a number of miniproposals to overcome the current stalemate (Chapter 8); it has addressed China's language policy in Tibet, and called for the return to the multi-linguistic policy of the Qing dynasty (Chapter 9); and it has examined and tested the idea that the Tibetan autonomous question could be addressed through a deliberative experiment (Chapter 10).
To this point, our ideas about democratic approaches have been treated separately in different chapters. It is useful now to combine these democratic approaches in both theory and practice; to forge a synthesis of them in a spirit of holism.
Two paradigms for, and two approaches to, the Taiwan and Tibet questions can be roughly grouped under the headings of realism and democracy. Analytically, these two are distinctive, but in reality each approach interacts and overlaps with the other. The two paradigms have shaped both political debates and intellectual research.
Over the past decades, realism has dominated in China, while Taipei and Dharamsala have advocated democracy. The US has favoured a democratic principle and supported the democratisation of Taiwan and Tibet communitties in exile, but has to come to grips with the fact that China has become a greater regional power. Different actors in Beijing, Taipei and Dharamsala have different interpretations of and emphases on the paradigms.
When realism and democracy are viewed as oppositional and exclusive, they constitute two closed knowledge systems. They can be considered ‘boxes’: each approach will be persuasive only to those who look at the issue from the same perspective. Recycling its own ideas, each side has perpetrated paradigms, predetermining opinion and rationality. Chinese realism regards the democracy and human rights language as a disguised attempt to disrupt Chinese unity and order. In contrast, the human rights discourse dismisses Chinese realist thinking as an attempt to maintain the authoritarian system and demand surrender to it. Both paradigms strengthen polarisation, leaving little room to search for a third way, an alternative to address the dilemma that the Tibet and Taiwan questions pose. It is important to develop an intellectual approach to break down closed knowledge production systems and find a way out of this predicament.
This book adopts Eric Wright's real utopian approach as an overriding methodology. Wright's ‘Real Utopian Project’ seeks to embrace the tension between ‘dreams and practice’, and is based on the belief that what is possible is not predetermined but is in fact shaped by one's vision. However, it advocates the notion of envisaging utopian ideals that are simultaneously grounded in real possibilities. Thus, the objective is to find radical, yet specific and plausible, solutions to problems (Wright 2010).
A real utopian approach does not endorse immoral realism. It challenges the diminished imagination of realism and calls for a more democratic imagination in addressing the Tibet and Taiwan questions. It takes democracy as central in addressing the Tibet and Taiwan questions. It holds that a utopian way is not wishful thinking, nor is it an intellectual luxury.
The controversial referendum proposals and the first island-wide referendum on 20 March 2004 were a crucial aspect of the emergence, growth and acceleration of the conscious effort by President Chen Shui-bian and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to articulate and redefine a distinct Taiwanese national identity. The controversial issues concerning Taiwanese national identity and the referendum have drawn much attention from policy-makers and scholars in Taiwan, Mainland China and the US. Yet a substantial study of the intrinsic and complex multirelations between Taiwanese national identity and the referendum question has not been undertaken.
This chapter focuses on the important topic of the debate over the resolution of Taiwanese national identity through referendums. The previous chapter provided the political background against which the impact of Taiwanese democratisation on the national identity question and the politics of referendum took place. Through a case study of the referendum in 2004 in Taiwan, this chapter shows how the proposed referendum was manipulated and watered down. While it points out the limits of referendums in general and the flaws of the Taiwanese referendum in particular, the chapter still favours referendums as a conflict-resolution mechanism, and argues for increasing the deliberative component of such referendums.
The chapter begins by outlining the party-political origins of the referendum and then examines the influence of outside actors on the process. It then describes the process of political struggle and negotiation between the pan-Blue and pan-Green camps and assesses the outcome of that struggle before finally arguing in favour of deliberative over mobilised form of referendum (Chapter 1).
REFERENDUM: PRINCIPLES AND PROBLEMS
Today, national groups are seen to have a right of secession, that is, a right to leave the existing state and to take over control of the territory that they currently occupy. The legitimacy of state boundaries is thought to be conditional upon the popular vote. There is a growing consensus that state boundaries are legitimate only if the state protects the peoples within them and the people assent to remaining within those boundaries. If these conditions are not met, peoples are increasingly able to divorce themselves from the political unit and take their land with them.
To find a solution to the Taiwan question, policy-makers and scholars have discussed the proposal of the interim (or peace) agreement across the Taiwan Strait (Chang 1999b; White 2000; for a critique of White, see Dittmer 2000). Nevertheless, the proposal does not address the underlying question of sovereignty, and misses the key issue of Taiwan's place in international society.
This chapter aims to fill this gap. It argues that the solution to the Taiwan question must take into account Taiwan's desire and place in international relations; to do so, Beijing has to reconsider its Taiwan policy in terms of a new concept of sovereignty. Beijing's rigid approach to sovereignty has led to Taiwan's attempts to take the alternative route of trying to generate international legitimacy by emphasising democracy (Larus 2006). This chapter examines ways to move beyond these diverging approaches and bring China and Taiwan back into a shared framework that reduces the likelihood of conflict and meets the needs for international recognition of both sides.
The notion of sovereignty is a key concept in the normative thinking and strategic policy on the Taiwan question, yet it appears illusory, ambiguous and problematic. It lends political leaders forceful justification for their actions on the one hand, and traps them in a fixed way of thinking without policy innovation on the other. Currently the One China policy means recognising only ‘one China’, the Mainland, as legitimate. And the membership of the UN means international recognition as a sovereign state. In this normative conceptual imperative, Taiwan is excluded from the UN.
To deal with the Taiwan question, Professor Wang Yizhou (2000) from the Academy of Social Sciences of China has called for a search for a new concept of sovereignty which is capable of defending the core element of the sovereignty principle while at the same time providing greater flexibility. Wang, however, does not propose a concrete idea. The chapter attempts to transcend nationalist thinking, challenge the traditional concept of sovereignty, and outline an alternative approach to international recognition for China and Taiwan. It will provide an analysis of China's conceptions of sovereignty, the Taiwanese response, and options for bringing these diverging approaches back into a shared framework for interna- tional recognition. The chapter does not focus on any immediate practical solution to the Taiwan question, but on the long-term intellectual ‘solution’.
This chapter serves as a conceptual introduction to the book and provides an intellectual foundation for the quest for democratic governance with regard to the Taiwan and Tibet issues. It first traces the history of democratic ideas and defines the core components of democratic governance related to the national boundary/identity question. It then develops an analytic classification of different kinds of national boundary/identity or membership issue, followed by an investigation of the criteria for choosing national boundaries. It explores the question as to why national boundaries should be a matter of democratic choice, and of whether democracy has the capacity of addressing the issue. It addresses the issue of why democratic management of the boundary issue is desirable and discusses the functions the democratic management entails. Finally it qualifies the project of democratic management with a cautious note.
THE ORIGIN AND COMPONENTS OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE
The French Revolution first gave practical effect to the idea that people should have some choice of national boundary/identity. Since the French Revolution was based on the idea of popular sovereignty, it was argued that new rulers should not annex territories without consultation with the inhabitants of those territories (Goodhart 1971: 99). In 1791, the French Assembly rejected the Communes’ vote for annexing Avignon, by a vote of 487 to 316, on the ground that there was not sufficient evidence about the freedom of voting. This was the first modern exercise of the democratic principle to resolve national boundary questions (Goodhart 1971: 100–1).
The following is a review of three classical thinkers on this topic in the last three centuries: Immanuel Kant, J. S. Mill and John Calhoun. The reason these writers have been selected is because their theories have far-reaching influence and a strong following in the 21st century.
Kant (1724–1804): perpetual peace and democracy
Kant implicitly and explicitly discussed the boundary question in his famous essay on perpetual peace (1795). Kant's approach to the boundary question was cosmopolitan and democratic, which was evident in his idea of three articles for a perpetual peace. The first definitive article for a perpetual peace is that the civil constitution of every nation should be republican. There are three principles of republicanism: the freedom of the members of a society, the dependence of everyone on a single, common legislation, and the law of the equality of all citizens (Kant 1983: 112).
China has a long history of dealing with minorities, and a long tradition of theorising about ethnic relations, based largely on the Confucian tradition, and supplemented with Marxist belief in the twentieth century. These two very different traditions are still influencing the Chinese practice of minority rights and multiculturalism. They both stand in some contrast to the Western liberal model of minority rights. With the growing influence of liberalism in China, it is important to see how traditional Chinese political thought will respond to Western liberal ideas of multicultural citizenship, and how the Western liberal model of minority rights will impact on China's ethnic minority policy.
The above different theoretical traditions constitute paradigms through which we can think about the Tibet issue and the future of Tibet. Currently, the dominant Western theoretical paradigm is a liberal-democratic one with several features like self-determination, referendum and autonomy. While I subscribe to this theoretical paradigm, I think that it is necessary for us to look at different theories of autonomy which offer different answers and scenarios. One possibility is the Confucian notion of ronghe, a kind of civilisational intermingling or integration between peoples and different religions.
The above three theoretical traditions are difficult to reconcile, and create theoretical tensions and difficulties in addressing the autonomy question in Tibet. Currently Beijing's Tibet policy is a mix of Confucius’ assimilation, Karl Marx's classless society, and Adam Smith's market force which will diminish the importance of ethnicity. The critical question is to explore areas of convergence to help reduce the theoretical gaps, and also to assess how Beijing can go beyond the Confucian and Marxist traditions.
This chapter examines the theoretical sources of current Chinese policies on minority rights. It will trace a complex combination of various intellectual inheritances, combining echoes of Confucian ideas of paternalistic guardianship over ‘backward groups’ or ‘younger brothers’ with echoes of Marxist/Leninist ideas of ethnic autonomy, mixed with echoes of liberal ideas of minority rights and affirmative action policies for minority groups.
The structure of this chapter is as follows. It begins with a brief introduction of the competing views of autonomy so as to highlight how different theoretical traditions offer different solutions to the Tibet issue, followed by an examination of both Confucian and Marxist discourse on minority issues and minorities’ rights.
This chapter comprises seven sections. Section 3.1 raises the question of the impact of democratisation on the national identity issue and political unity. Section 3.2 proposes several theoretical hypotheses. Section 3.3 undertakes a historical test of a controversial ‘empire thesis’ through an historical overview of China's national identity question, in particular an historical account of the various episodes when Chinese nationalism has clashed with democratisation over the national identity question. Sections 3.4 and 3.5 examine further the clash between democratisation and nationalism in today's China, with a particular focus on Taiwan and Tibet. Section 3.6 argues against a strong historical determinism by formulating an antiempire thesis, and explores the possible democratic mechanisms through which China could avoid the logic of ‘the empire thesis’. Section 3.7 is a short conclusion.
THE IMPACT OF CHINA'S NATIONAL IDENTITY QUESTION ON CHINESE DEMOCRATISATION
The Chinese leadership is now reluctant to initiate large-scale democratisation at the national level in China. Indeed, Chinese state nationalists oppose democratisation, which they see as threatening national unity and control of the territories. In particular, the break-up of the former USSR and the separation of East Timor from Indonesia have reinforced Beijing's fear and resistance to democracy, while China's successful reunion with Hong Kong and Macau has strengthened Beijing's belief that power, not democracy, can unify China.
In contrast, Chinese liberal dissidents, such as Yan Jiaqi, Wei Jingsheng and Hu Ping, call for democratic federalism to resolve the questions of Taiwan and Tibet. It is argued that through federalism, a grand-coalition government and genuine autonomy, China might be able to maintain its size and unity while also becoming democratic. This view is contested by this empirical study of Chinese modern history and the effect of the national identity question on democratisation.
This chapter attempts to analyse the impact of China's national identity question on Chinese democratisation and to explore why China has difficulty in establishing democracy. Shaohua Hu (2000) has used historical legacies, local forces, the world system, socialist values and economic development to explain China's difficulty in establishing democracy. This chapter focuses on the national identity question and examines the conditions in which Chinese nationalism can be said to constitute an obstacle to democratisation. It will seek to demonstrate the logic of the conflict between democracy and state nationalism in the context of China's national identity issue.
This book examines the simple but significant idea that ordinary citizens have the right to voice their opinion on the national boundary/identity question and to cast votes on it in a form of referendum. Citizen's voice and public deliberation mechanisms are powerless without a voting device. A vote without citizen's voice and public deliberation is fraught with danger; it escalates conflict rather than solving or managing it. It is necessary to combine referendum and public deliberation: a sort of deliberative referendum (Chapter 11). It is around this idea that this book brings together current work on the normative question of national boundaries with current work on deliberative democracy.
In the long history of human life, the national boundary/identity issue is largely decided by state powers and elites and/or by ruthless military force: ‘might’ defeated reason with regard to the boundary question. It is also true, historically, that the origins of state boundaries were accidental and that in most cases national boundaries were not made democratically. However, upon the arrival of the Enlightenment Movement and Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, we can discern the beginning of a rational and democratic project.
Changing contemporary conditions make democratic choice increasingly possible. A number of new conditions which were absent, or at least hard to discern, have been created. They include the prevalence of democracy throughout the world, international support for and sympathy with minorities, and sophisticated communication systems which make people aware of minority issues quickly. Deliberative institutions, multiculturalism and the coexistence of multiple identities go a long way towards sustaining these new conditions. Moreover, the effectiveness of force as a means of solving boundary questions has been eroding. There is also a widespread belief that democracy can accommodate multiple identities and demands and can consequently help to manage problems of national identity. Under these conditions, democratic theories in the 1990s thoroughly rethought the boundary question using a new set of democratic ideas and devices, thus challenging the thesis that democracy cannot manage the boundary question. Today, with the deepening process of democratisation around the world, we are able to continue to enrich the great Enlightenment tradition to solve, settle and manage the national boundary/identity conflict in a rational, peaceful and democratic manner.
In recent years, Tibetans have engaged in a series of protests to defend their increasingly marginalised language. In October 2010, more than a thousand Tibetans in Qinghai protested against reports that the government was planning to put in place policies that would limit the use of the Tibetan language in schools by teaching all subjects except for English and Tibetan in Putonghua (BBC 2010). These protests spread to Beijing, where Tibetan university students also protested their concern about the proposed policies (Wong 2010). The European Parliament has supported Tibetans in defending the status of their language. It adopted a resolution in support of a language policy in which all subjects can be taught in the Tibetan language and condemned the Chinese government for its use of Putonghua as the main medium of instruction in Tibet.
China was, and still is, a multi-lingual society, and has practised multi-lingual teaching for many centuries. The fifty-five recognised minorities in the PRC use more than 120 different languages (Sun Hongkai 2004). Officials in ethnic autonomous regions are encouraged to speak multiple languages, including both Putonghua 普通话 (common speech, mandarin) and local languages (Zhou 2004). The National People's Congress uses seven different languages in its work, and five different scripts appear on Chinese bank notes. Among the Han Chinese majority there is also great linguistic diversity, with a number of spoken Chinese language groups, such as the Wu, Yue and Min, having tens of millions of speakers. The expansion of Chinese state power and the power of the market into all corners of China has, however, witnessed the dramatic spread of Putonghua across China, which has slowly diluted the importance of minority languages.
There now seems to be a tendency towards the strengthening of Putonghua, as indicated by a number of factors: the decline in the use of minority languages; the increasing use of Putonghua as an official teaching language in minority areas; the use of Putonghua in official meetings involving minorities; and the lack of incentives for those Han Chinese who work in minority areas to study minority languages (see Evans 2010; Feng 2009; Lin 1997).